When the son rushed up the Madison Square Garden steps and found his father, and when they clung together with joyful passion, their inner toughness was unmistakable.

This was not a moment for reflection, because the son’s teammates were waiting for him to snip the shredded remnants of the twine and join in celebration. This was not a moment for contemplation, because the father has had years to examine how they’ve reached this intersection, how their journey is rooted in a reversal of roles.

But if they had, if Peyton Siva Jr. allowed his mind to travel back to only a few years ago, to when he was just 13, he might have thought of that day he borrowed his older brother’s Dodge and drove the streets of Seattle, searching for his suicidal dad. And had Peyton Siva Sr. dwelled on that awful stretch, he might have pondered the gun he was planning to use on himself, to quell the pain for good.

He’s home in Seattle now, back from a wondrous trip to Manhattan in which he witnessed his son, a junior guard, carve intricate highlights on the world’s most famous court as the Louisville Cardinals picked a ripe time to peak by winning the Big East title. Soon Siva Sr. will depart for Portland, where on Thursday the fourth-seeded Cardinals take on No. 13 Davidson in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Those who have seats near the Louisville bench might want to bring some earplugs.

Siva Sr. can’t possibly stifle his enthusiasm. There are plenty of parents who’ve struggled and sacrificed so their kid might someday play in the universe’s zaniest sports tournament, but not many of those parents owe their life to their child.

So pardon Siva Sr. if for entire games he barely sits despite the excruciating pain that snakes from his back down his legs, a bone disease that keeps him from full-time work. Humor the man as he tugs at silver tufts of hair while screaming, at a rat-a-tat pace, “Stay focused!,” because never can there be enough reminders.

His fingers are mangled from injuries he said he received when he went to block a bullet meant for his head. Other scars dot his skin but most are buried deep, brought to the surface only when the father talks about the day he was standing on a sidewalk in Seattle’s South End, wasted beyond comprehension and close to ending it all.

“Everything was off. I had so much hatred, anger. Peyton pulls up in his brother’s car. He didn’t have a license,” Siva Sr., told me, his voice clogged with emotion. “I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ He said, ‘I came to get you.’

“I was drinking, using (drugs), basically out of my mind. I had a gun, ready to use. A whole bunch of things were going through my head. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do nothing but jump in the car. I had to hear what he had to say,” Siva Sr. said.

Siva Sr.’s arrival at this lonely, selfish place can be traced back to the death of his own father, who passed away from cancer at age 52, shortly after becoming a minister. “He was a strong supporter, he came to all my games, but with him gone I was in a world where I didn’t care,” Siva Sr. said. “There were a lot of issues that took a toll on me.”

Soon he was running with gangs, stirring up the Seattle pavement. Two days before 1998 struck, Siva Sr. said he “saw one of my best friends get shot point blank” in the fog of turf war.

“I was shot at and I happened to have blocked the bullet. I used to kickbox and I think that’s what saved me. I saw (the shooter) pull up, I was watching his finger, he pulled the trigger. It was aimed at my face,” he said, and now the emotion has vanished, his voice a distant narrator.

“I happened to put my hand up. The bullet ricocheted off the bone in my finger. It wasn’t really even a fight, just another gang member trying to make his name.”

Divorced from Yvette, the mother of Peyton and his brother Michael, Siva Sr. roamed in and out of trouble, to and from jail, while his children stayed on the periphery of thug life.

"A whole bunch of things were going through my head. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do nothing but jump in the car. I had to hear what he had to say."

“I was going through my issues with my upbringing and I didn’t have the tools to walk away,” Siva Sr. said. “It’s something I’m not proud of.”

Then came words from an angel.

“I came to pick you up, dad.”

A boy still finding his own way on this tortured planet somehow was brave enough and mad enough to crawl behind the wheel of that Dodge and scour Seattle’s dark alleys until he found his despondent father. Everyone around Peyton Jr. seemed to be in prison, or headed there, but even at the age of 13 he knew the cycle could end.

“Stop being selfish,” the son told his dad that day on the street corner. “I really need you.”

Right there, with the gun inches away, the boy pleaded with this depressed and damaged man to turn around his life.

“He said, ‘Dad, I know you love me. I know you’d do everything to be at my games and to be there for me. I don’t need you to be in jail. I need you to help me to get into college,’ ” Siva Sr. recalled, the emotion bubbling back up. “He said he’d work hard at getting good grades, he’d go to church, whatever it took.”

And right there the father tossed the pistol into a garbage can—“I’m pretty sure the city of Seattle’s got it now,” he said—reached out for help and began cleaning up his life.

“That was my turnaround, knowing my son had so much heart that he came to find me,” he said. “I should have been dead.”

So indulge this father when he belly-bumps strangers following one of his son’s driving scoops, or goes slightly maniacal after the Cardinals smoothly finish off yet another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it transition. It’s astonishing how quickly the whip-thin Peyton Jr. has rebuilt a season that began sluggishly, with a concussion and then a brutally sprained ankle. Or maybe not, considering how his father’s cheer—“Stay focused!”— thumps constantly in the subconscious.

“Sometimes your concentration can go elsewhere, to the pain, the mistakes. I just remind him to keep his head straight,” said the father. “Peyton turned around his season by working hard, being on time, meeting his trainer, listening to coach (Rick) Pitino, just staying focused.”

Siva Jr. was a whirling blur throughout the Big East Tournament, and after it was finally over, after he had earned the MVP trophy and appeared ready to collapse from the wear and tear incurred by the Louisville’s frantic pace, he could not stop until he found his parents several rows up from the court. There were Peyton and Yvette, divorced but still best friends, and as the son bundled them tight, the lump in the father’s throat made it impossible for him to yell anymore.

“Overwhelming. Ecstatic. I’m still speechless,” Siva Sr. said a few days later, though clearly he’s not. “It was truly amazing. I’m so thankful he never gave up on me.”